Europe will continue to fall behind the US and Asia until a severe crisis forces politicians to act, UBS chief executive Sergio Ermotti has warned, blaming the continent’s decline on “over-regulation across the board”. Ermotti said “things are bad” in Europe “but not bad enough to take action”, pointing to “no growth” and a “clear divergence” in productivity compared with rival economic powers. “If it would be over-regulation only in banking, one could probably live with it. We have over-regulation across the board. That’s the real problem. The amount of bureaucracy, [the] lack of innovation that goes on is a fact,” Ermotti said in a video interview with the Financial Times. He said it would take a “very profound and painful crisis” such as the 2012 Greek debt crisis – when the country teetered on the verge of financial collapse – to pressure European politicians to confront its economic malaise. The Swiss executive added: “As long as you have governments promising that they can …